#WEAREHUMAN

By Spark Foundry

A team from Spark Foundry attended the greatly anticipated #WEAREHUMAN event organised by Electric Media and what a great event it was, with a brilliant line up of speakers. We’ve outlined our favourite takeaways below.

Binaural Sound

First up Kate Russell, Presenter & Technology Journalist, BBC Worldwide gave us an immersive hearing experience using binaural sound as an example of one of many advances in technology.
What is it? Reproductions of sound the way human ears hear it.
The experience? Listening to headphones feeling like someone is walking around you, whispering in one ear, then the other, standing in front of you or standing behind. The sound literally moves around your head.
How can it be used? The BBC used it in a special binaural version of ‘Knock Knock’, episode 4 in the latest series of Doctor Who, giving an immersive sound experience for headphone listeners. More to come, no doubt!

We are Human After All and Moments Matter

Another speaker that caught our attention was Tej Rekhi, VP of Product Strategy at Wayve. Tej takes a zero-tolerance approach to using creative designed for one medium and using it in the same way on another without real consideration for that other platform.
What’s happening? Adblockers are a sign of consumers losing respect for mobile creative. We use our phones almost 3,000 times per day and brands need to both understand and respect these personal and privileged moments.
What can we do? There has been a 20% increase in digital video viewing yet we continue to create video for TV, horizontally. When, in fact we need to use vertical video on mobile. Tej used the word fluid, saying the format can be changed in a matter of minutes so it’s not difficult. Really, this is just being responsive which isn’t a new concept but needs to be taken more seriously. ‘We are human after all and moments matter’.

Millennial is Not an Audience, it’s a Mindset

The last of our favourites from a great line up was Mark Adams, Head of Innovation from Vice Media with a presentation called ‘Growing Market Share with Beating Heart Millennials’. What a brilliant presentation, entertaining, engaging and informative.
Mark hammered home a great message, we need to stop labeling younger generations and using terms like Millennials, Generation X, Centennials, Gen Z etc.
Why? Because it’s not an audience type, this is a widespread change in mindset. Across all ages. Most people now, are less likely to accept what they are told without question. For example, information relayed by politicians, religious authorities, companies or brands.

This tied in with Marks second major point, which was to stop planning with a product first approach and start with our audience first but of course we can only do this if we know who they really are and what they are interested in. Let’s look beyond labels and age groups.